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Councils with social services responsibilities are being invited to bid to become pilots for the Department for Education and Skills' new framework for working with children and families.

Three councils will be selected to run the integrated children's system (ICS), which will be part of the introduction of e-social care records in 2005 and support wider government initiatives including the identification, referral and tracking system to help information sharing.

But Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson Simon Hughes warned that the new tracking system could be undermined because of its reliance on unproven IT.


Hughes told Community Care's sister magazine, Computer Weekly: "To rely on a combination of expensive IT, some of which is still on the drawing board, is to multiply the risks both to children and the exchecquer." 

- The closing date for pilot applications is 20 August. Contact Jim.Brown@doh.gsi.gov.uk